Open Knowledge Community Stories

Hackathon for Thessaloniki Greece

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:48 -0500

The Municipality of Thessaloniki in collaboration with the Open Knowledge Greece and the Research Unit URENIO invite the city’s developers to participate in an application development marathon (hackathon) in order to improve the operations of the municipality and the city (http://hackathess.eu/). Continuing the success story known as “Apps for Greece” (“1st event Applications for Thessaloniki”), the organizers invite contestants to exploit the potential of technology and to develop web and mobile applications, which will improve the quality of life in the city.

The hackathon participants are asked to focus on any of the critical issues that will improve the functioning of the city: transportation, energy, nutrition, water, buildings, infrastructure, governance, etc. You can create web or mobile applications in the language and platform of your choice. The jury, made up of members of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, Academics, Researchers and Entrepreneurs, will evaluate the participants.

Description

What will happen: Application development marathon (Hachathon) for Thessaloniki.

Who should attend: Programmers and software designers who live or work in the area of Thessaloniki in groups of one to three people.

Where: The open co-working space “Coho”, Nap. Zervas, 10, Thessaloniki.

When: The contest will be held on the 29 and 30 November 2014. The awards will be given on December 4, 2014.

Schedule: 29-30 / 11/2014

10:00 to 11:00: Organizers Presentations

11:00 to 17:00 (Sunday): Application development Marathon

17:00 to 19:00: Presentation of applications to the jury

19: 00 to 21:00: Presentation of applications on startup Europe

21:00: Announcement of the results

04/12/2014

20:00: Award winners

We offer: Short presentations of the contest’s basic guidelines, which will help you get started. Meals, snacks, soft drinks and coffee to keep you alert, and breakfast on Sunday morning. Wireless Internet access.

You must bring: Your laptop, creativity, passion, skills and ideas. Also, a cooperative attitude and team spirit as you will be member of a team.

Subject: All teams participating in the competition have to work on a problem faced by citizens of Thessaloniki. The problems will be chosen from a list provided by the organizers. Problems not in the list can also be selected by the participants, as long as they are related to the hackathon’s theme.

Prizes:

1st Prize: 3.000 €

2nd Prize: 2.000 €

3rd Prize: 1.000 €

Jury:The Jury will consist of members of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, Academics, Researchers and Entrepreneurs. The members of the jury will be announced soon.

Evaluation criteria:

There are three key criteria against which applications will be assessed:

Quality concept: The application is novel and innovative.
Development concept: The application is functional, it works without major problems, it is well designed, and it can be offered to real users with minor improvements.
Possible outcomes: The implementation, once offered to citizens can help them in solving a significant administrative, social, environmental or economic issue in the city.

Registration:

You can enroll here until November 23, 2014.

Open Access Week 2014, Thessaloniki Greece

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:44 -0500

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Library (AUTH) in cooperation with Open Knowledge Greece invites you to the event “Open Access Week 2014” to be held on 21rst October at the Amphitheatre of the Central Library.

Time: October 21, 2014 from 11am to 1:30pm

Location: Amphitheatre of the Central Library
Street: AUTh Campus
City/Town: Thessaloniki
Website or Map: http://maps.auth.gr/?lang=en&…
Event Type: informational

Program

11.00 Opening

11.30 Open Access Button
Alexandra Giannopoulou, Lawyer and PhDc of Université Paris II Panthéon Assas, member of the OAB (via Skype)

11.45 The Open Data in the Knowledge Society
Dr. Charalmapos Bratsas, President of the Open Knowledge Greece, School of Mathematics AUTH

12.15 Open Research Health Data Management
Dr. Panagiotis Bamidis, Assist. Professor of Medical Education Informatics, Medical Physics Laboratory, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Open Knowledge Greece Founding Member, Advisory Board Member of the Open Knowledge International.

12.45 Open Access Library Services in AuTH

S.Alexandridou, N.Grigoriadou, E.Emmanouilidou, S.Zapounidou, N.Kaliakouda, V.Karkanis, F.Lioliou, D.Papadaki, Librarians of AUTH Central Library

13.00 Strategies to Publish in Research Projects and Open Access
Sophia Zapounidou, Librarian service website

13.45 Discussion - Questions

OK Philippines "Talk Data to me" an open data meet-up

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:40 -0500

Our local group (Open Knowledge - Philippines) will have a meet-up entitled “Talk Data to me” on 28 Oct 2014, 7pm at Bo’s Coffee, Glorietta 5 Makati City. This will be the second meet-up after the Maker’s Festival 2014 held last 14-15 Sep 2014 at Glorietta 5 atrium.

Our agenda is to confirm the membership and assigning key people to hold working groups. In addition, we will initiate the planning session for the upcoming activities of OKPH in 2015. In relation to our projects, the Open LGU-Full Disclosure Policy will look into openspending platform. Another project of Bantay.ph headed by Happy Feraren (School of Data Fellow) is the collection and analysis of Civil Service Commission (CSC) call center data and bring it forward to a more effective public-driven feedback mechanism and public participation. We will also activate our membership to participate in populating the Open Data Census - datasets from the Philippines.

The meet-up is through the initiative of Happy Feraren (School of Data Fellow) and Joseph De Guia (local group ambassador) with the support of Bantay.Ph.

DatosElSalvador.org has been shortlisted for the Open Data Social Impact Award of The Open Data Institute

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:37 -0500

DatosElSalvador.org has been shortlisted for the Open Data Social Impact Award of The Open Data Institute:

DatosElSalvador.org is the Open Data portal created by OKFN El Salvador in order to promote and open public data for citizen. The portal has more than 300 resources and 60 dataset of public data available in CSV.

OKFN Ambassador in El Salvador has been nominated and shortlisted for the Open Data Individual Champion Award of The Open Data Institute

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:33 -0500

OKFN Ambassador in El Salvador has been nominated and shortlisted for the Open Data Individual Champion Award of The Open Data Institute:

Iris Palma (me!) is in the shortlist for the Open Data Individual Champion Award of The Open Data Institute that celebrates outstanding invidivual pioneer of open data. We have created DatosElSalvador.org that is also in the shortlist for the Social Impact Award.

OKFN Ambassador in El Salvador is keyspearker at the Social Good Summit United Nations in El Salvador

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:30 -0500

OKFN Ambassador in El Salvador is keyspearker at the Social Good Summit United Nations in El Salvador

First Edition of Desarrollando América Latina in El Salvador: Open Data Initiative

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:27 -0500

First Edition of Desarrollando América Latina in El Salvador: Open Data Initiative:

For the first time ever we have in El Salvador the first edition of Desarrollando América Latina the biggest regional initiative for the develops of apps with open data and social impact.

The first "Open Data in China" Workshop

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:20 -0500

With the generous funding and tremendous support from the World Bank, Open Data China and Lab for Digital and Mobile Governance, Fudan University successfully held the first ever “Open Data in China” Workshop on 21 Oct. This workshop brought government officials from 7 different open data initiatives in China, 6 representatives from demand side, and 5 international and regional open data experts into together to share their experience, challenges, concerns and ideas on open data development in China.

We feel really honor that we can have Mrs Amparo Ballivian from the World Bank and Mr Joel Gurin from the GovLab, NYU as our keynote speakers. Their talks on latest evidence on open data for economic growth and social innovation really inspire Chinese Gov audience to understand the concept and why they should do it.

We also feel really glad that this time we can have 7 government representatives which feature: Shanghai initiative, Beijing Initiative, Wuhan Initiative and NanHai District (under the Foshan City, GuangDong Province) Initiative .

On demand side, we also had 6 representatives from academic, urban planning, media, NGO, design, private sector highlighting how open data can bring new change in their sector and what they did in this field.

In the end of the day, we had a session on building open data ecosystem. Bruce Haupt from Open Houston shared the story of building up partnership between city gov and community in Houston, Joel Gurin talked about the experience of designing and organizing the first open data roundtable with US department of Commerce, and TH Schee from Code for Tomorrow presented their own works in Taiwan to show how grass-root community can boost open data innovation. Dr Zheng also shared his research on open data ecosystem and then the session was wrapped up by Feng Gao’s talk on Open Data China Community.

The end of the workshop is not the end of the day and we also had the biggest surprise at the bund, Shanghai. Wonder what was it? Please check out the workshop information site (http://hackfoldr.org/opendatachinaworkshop2014/) for the photos and all other materials.

in Campus Part: Conference about open data and entreprenuership by OKFN Ambassador in El Salvador

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:17 -0500

in Campus Part: Conference about open data and entreprenuership by OKFN Ambassador in El Salvador :

Campus Party is the largest techonology event in the world and this is the first edition in El Salvador, will take place at CIFCO from No 27th-Nov. 30th in San Salvador.

Nordic Open Data Week in Göteborg 30/5

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:17:02 -0500

Do you want to be involved in developing new smart services? Do you want to take part in inspiring seminars on digitization and open data? Then you should sign up for the Gothenburg event during the Nordic Open Data Week 2015. It is free and you can compete for great prizes.

On May 30, 2015 the City of Gothenburg is organizing, together with SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden and the Social Media Club Gothenburg, a full day on open data. During the day there will be seminars on innovation, open data and digital services. In addition to the seminars, there is a hackathon, where you will be able to develop ideas with those data sets available, along with other participants. The event is supported by VINNOVA.

The competition focuses on solving the challenges emanating from the three sustainability pillars, socially, economically and an ecologically sustainable society. Compete individually or in teams. You can start developing your contribution as soon as you have registered. On May 30, all participants gathers for the on-site development of ideas through visualization of prototypes and suggestions. The ideas will be demonstrated for the audience and the winner is decided by the end of the day.

– My hope is that we can get to see all sorts of exciting creations, why not a horn saluting us Gothenburgers when we fall below our levels of air pollution, says Ronald Caous, leading Gothenburg digital development.

Serdar Temiz, doctoral candidate in open data at KTH and chairman of Open Knowledge Sweden, is one of the keynote speakers.

For registration and more information please click here

Welcome!

OK Ambassador in El Salvador is selected to join the Open Government Fellowship Program Latin American and the Caribbean

irispalmaokfnes-blog — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:16:58 -0500

OK Ambassador in El Salvador is selected to join the Open Government Fellowship Program Latin American and the Caribbean:

Tras el lanzamiento de la iniciativa en diciembre de 2014, en marzo de 2015 se dio inicio a la primera edición del Programa OEA para la Promoción de Gobiernos Abiertos en las Américas. En esta ocasión, a través de un competitivo proceso de selección, 24 participantes de 16 países de las Américas fueron elegidos para formar parte de la primera generación de fellows del Programa.

Los 24 participantes comenzaron el recorrido del Programa participando durante dos semanas de un curso virtual sobre Estrategias para el Gobierno Abierto en las Américas. Esta instancia sirvió como primer contacto entre los participantes y fue el preámbulo del primer seminario, celebrado entre los días 22 y 28 de marzo en Osprey Point, Maryland, y Washington, DC. Durante una semana, los fellows se reunieron a debatir sobre los temas más relevantes del Gobierno Abierto en la región, intercambiaron ideas y experiencias, participaron de talleres de teambuilding y liderazgo, y participaron de eventos de networking con expertos internacionales de reconocidas organizaciones que trabajan en el campo del Gobierno Abierto.

Además, en el primer seminario los participantes conformaron equipos que trabajarán en proyectos conjuntos para plantear soluciones innovadoras a algunos de los desafíos que el paradigma del Gobierno Abierto plantea en la región. Los fellows volverán a reunirse en el segundo seminario del Programa, que tendrá lugar en octubre en México y culminará en la Cumbre de la Alianza para el Gobierno Abierto 2015.

#OpenGov #OpenData #OKElSalvadorAmb

Sociedad civil presenta propuestas de Gobierno Abierto al Gobierno de El Salvador

irispalmaokfnes-blog — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:16:55 -0500

Sociedad civil presenta propuestas de Gobierno Abierto al Gobierno de El Salvador:

San Salvador, 28 de octubre de 2014. La Fundación Nacional para el Desarrollo (FUNDE), Iniciativa Social para la Democracia (ISD), la Fundación Salvadoreña para el Desarrollo Económico y Social (FUSADES), Fundación Democracia – Transparencia – Justicia (Fundación DTJ) y Open Knowledge El Salvador; con el apoyo del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD), realizaron la entrega del documento con propuestas de acciones en el tema de gobierno abierto al Secretario de Participación Ciudadana, Transparencia y Anticorrupción (SPCTA), Marcos Rodríguez, con la finalidad que las mismas sean discutidas y valoradas en la construcción del Plan de Acción 2014-2016, que el Gobierno de El Salvador debe presentar ante la Alianza para el Gobierno Abierto (AGA), a finales del próximo mes de noviembre.

Primera celebración del Día de Datos Abiertos en El Salvador

irispalmaokfnes-blog — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:16:47 -0500

Primera celebración del Día de Datos Abiertos en El Salvador:

El viernes 20 de febrero de 2015, la Fundación Nacional para el Desarrollo (FUNDE) como parte del Consorcio por la Transparencia y Lucha contra la Corrupción, se unió a la primera celebración del “Día de Datos Abiertos” en El Salvador.

El “Día de los Datos Abiertos” se celebra mundialmente todos los 21 de febrero para motivar la adopción de políticas de datos abiertos, los cuales pueden ser utilizados, reutilizados y redistribuidos libremente por cualquier persona. Es una filosofía y práctica que persigue que determinados datos estén disponibles de forma libre a todo el mundo, sin restricciones de derechos de autor, patentes u otros mecanismos de control.

Las actividades realizadas por el Consorcio por la Transparencia y Lucha contra la Corrupción, con la colaboración de Open Knowledge El Salvador/DatosElSalvador, tuvieron como objetivo concientizar acerca de la importancia de contar con datos abiertos, y su valor en los ámbitos públicos y sociales para la generación de conocimiento.

La mañana del 20 de febrero, se desarrolló el foro sobre “Los datos abiertos y su contribución a la transparencia”, en el que se tuvo una conferencia magistral a cargo de Ronny Rojas, periodista de investigación costarricense y coordinador del Proyecto de Reportajes sobre Crimen Organizado y Corrupción (OCCRP por sus siglas en inglés), quien compartió algunas experiencias internacionales sobre la reutilización de datos públicos para promover la transparencia. Además, se sostuvo un conversatorio con la participación de periodistas y comunicadores de reconocida trayectoria en el país, quienes expusieron los principales desafíos y oportunidades en la materia.

Por la tarde, se desarrolló un taller sobre “Visualizaciones y reutilización de datos abiertos”, en el que participaron periodistas, investigadores y estudiantes interesados en el tema, quienes conocieron algunos ejemplos, experiencias y técnicas, para aprender a construir herramientas a partir de la reutilización de datos.

Es importante reconocer que la transparencia no es sólo el acceso a la información, también se requiere contar con material abierto que permita utilizar y reutilizar la información libremente, para poder analizarla y visualizarla, logrando una mejor comprensión de la misma.

Int’l tie-up seeks to boost Pinoy data journalism skills

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:16:40 -0500

Written by TJ Dimacali GMA News July 13, 2015 7:20pm

See More - http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/521370/scitech/science/int-l-tie-up-seeks-to-boost-pinoy-data-journalism-skills

On Monday, July 13, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) and the UK- based Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) launched Data Journalism PH 2015, an intensive three-day workshop aimed at boosting local capacity to create stories from raw data.

The launch event in Quezon City was attended by reporters and staff of various major Philippine news outlets and blogs.

Unreliable paper government

PCIJ Executive Director Malou Mangahas underscored the storytelling potential of data-driven journalism, particularly in an age of social media and cloud computing—barring hurdles to “liberating” the data for public consumption.

“The potential for stories is there, but the data regime in the Philippines is based largely on hard copies. A lot of information is still on paper—it’s unreliable, inaccessible, and not so open,” she explained.

“A large portion of our population is tech-savvy. Unfortunately, a large portion of our government isn’t,” admitted Department of Budget Management (DBM) Usec. Bon Moya, who also heads the Open Data Task Force behind the government’s open-data Data.gov.ph initiative.

According to independent site InternetLiveStats.com, in 2014 alone, the Philippines registered an Internet penetration rate of almost 40 percent, with 39.4 million Internet users out of a population of just over 100 million. The country follows behind its neighbors Malaysia and Vietnam, which boast penetration rates of 40 percent and 43 percent, respectively.

Moreover, it is hoped that greater public awareness of data journalism will enable greater transparency and accountability from government.

“The Philippines has an incredible opportunity here. The move for freedom of information is a chance to leapfrog other countries in terms of transparency. But transparency is just a means to an end, which is accountability,” said OKF data expert Sam Leon.

Stories behind numbers

But for that to happen, it is important to develop basic data skills among journalists, bloggers, and other public watchdogs—many of whom might feel intimidated by the need to work with numbers.

“Kailangan bawasan ang takot sa numero. It’s not all about math. The challenge is to find the stories behind the numbers. Numbers are only significant if we can draw meaningful stories from them,” said Commission on Audit (COA) Commissioner Heidi Mendoza, who also spoke at the event.

Wrapping up the launch event, World Bank economist Rogier van den Brink likened the Philippine situation in terms of pushing for public accountability to that of the early United States.

“This has happened before,” he said. “The present Philippine experience echoes that of the US in the 1800’s, when ‘muckraker’ journalists formed coalitions with civil servants to expose problems in a government that was highly corrupt.”

The intensive workshop runs from July 13 to July 15, covering the basics of how to acquire data (including the process of “scraping” data to convert it into machine-readable format); data analysis; and data visualization.

- See more at: http://ph.okfn.org/2015/07/14/intl-tie-up-seeks-to-boost-pinoy-data-journalism-skills/#sthash.ZEy6sCo3.dpuf

Sweden's Open Knowledge Awards

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:15:48 -0500

Open Knowledge Sweden is pleased to announce its latest project, the Open Knowledge Awards: Open knowledge is knowledge, often in the form of data, available for everyone to freely use, reuse and redistribute without any sorts of restrictions. Open Knowledge Sweden envisions enlightened societies where everyone has access to key information in order to make daily or life changing choices with the help of relevant information, where authorities, institutions, businesses and other entities are fully transparent and at the same time, using open knowledge to increase innovation and efficiency on finding solutions. Open Knowledge should be a mainstream concept and a natural part of our everyday lives.

The Open Knowledge Awards will help raise awareness on how society, including authorities, businesses, organizations and other entities can benefit from open knowledge. OK Awards covers categories such as transparency, entrepreneurship, open science, region/municipality and business initiative. Each award will put a quality mark and recognize the work of organizations, companies and authorities towards transparency and open knowledge.

The award winners will set an example of how businesses and organizations have best used open knowledge for innovative solutions, how authorities have been more transparent with the use of open knowledge and how public figures have used their influence for change in that direction, both cultural and legal.

Open Knowledge Sweden is partnering with KTH’s Industrial Marketing and Entrepreneurship Division. Serdar Temiz, chairman of Open Knowledge Sweden and member of the jury said:“We believe that OK Awards will provide change agents to get recognition for their effort on opening knowledge in order to foster innovation as well as to enable transparent, accountable democracy. It will also raise the bar for all open knowledge stakeholders in Sweden.”

Open Knowledge Awards

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 05:15:44 -0500

On December 2, 2016 Industrial Marketing and Entrepreneurship (IME) Division will host first of its kind (OKA) in Sweden in collaboration with Open Knowledge Sweden (OKS), the Swedish NGO which is one of chapters of global Open Knowledge Foundation. OKA aim to provide recognition to the organizations and individuals that works towards open knowledge.

Wikimedia Sweden is one of the sponsors of the event and will be represented by Anna Troberg,CEO of Wikimedia Sweden.
Candidate nomination was crowd-sourced and finalists for each of 6 categories were selected from these nominations. Terrence Brown from Indek and Serdar Temiz from OKS/Indek shares jury membership with Annika Lidne (CEO & co-founder of Dramatify), Peter Krantz (CIO of National Library of Sweden ) and Jessica Jederberg Wodmar, (well known speaker and communication expert from Jcwkommunikation.se). Jessica Jederberg Wodmar and Terrence Brown will also be moderators of the event.
Asmen Gul is project manager of Open Knowledge Awards.

Event will start at 17:00 at Indek Plattan. For more information please check www.okawards.org

Open Education India now boasts a long list of books and...

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 03:30:33 -0400

Open Education India now boasts a long list of books and educational materials. All contents are licensed under CC-BY, enabling smooth sharing of the works. India has around 30 major languages and we have a long way to go before we have a comprehensive collection of educational materials in all these vernacular languages. However, things are already looking up as we have started to get content in the regional languages too. We are about to take the project to the next level by starting a system of publishing original content from authors. - See more at: http://in.okfn.org/open-education/#sthash.OjlNCrph.dpuf

We are pleased to inform you that Open Education India now...

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 03:30:49 -0400

We are pleased to inform you that Open Education India now boasts a large collection of educational materials in a number of vernacular languages apart from English (Hindi, Bengaali, Sanskrit, etc.). The list is growing every day. Our major aim has been to build up a platform that can be used by students, educators and readers at the minimum possible rates (PDFs without pictures). We try to consciously keep the number of pictures to a minimum, as that decreases the cost of making photocopies considerably). This is important particularly in the context of schools in rural areas.

As the list is growing, so is also the need to find more and more involved contributors, who can take this project to the next level. We would be happy to welcome anyone who is passionate for Open Education. If anybody wants to contribute content, even in a foreign language, that too is welcome, as we have in India quite a large number of people, who study such languages.

To know more, please visit: in.okfn.org/open-education

OK Philippines Participates in Maker Festival Manila 2014

Mon, 15 Sep 2014 12:48:28 -0400

OK Philippines represent!!!!!!! Joseph De Guia, local group ambassador, TJ Dimacali, journalist and media manager, and Happy Feraren, School of Data Fellow, represent the OK Philippines local group and lead the event activities in the festival. The group participated in the exhibition showcasing Open Knowledge working groups: Open Government Data, Lobbying Transparency, Open Education, Open Spending, and School of Data. The event also gave us the opportunity to recruit members of the community with more than a hundred participants signed up for membership and looking forward to OK Philippines launching event. Happy was also there for the lightning presentation on Introduction to Open Data and School of Data, as well as the movement of OKFN in Europe. The open data movement and activism is new in the Philippines. The local group is being led by OK Philippines.The Open Data Task Force of the national government is the national prime mover of open government data leading transparency and accountability as well as efficiency in government services.

The event was organized by the tech group community of Mozilla Philippines and its partners. Maker Festival Manila 2014 recently concluded on 14 September 2014 at Glorietta 5 Mall Makati City. The gathering of makers using the web to make collaboration better for all users, knowing more, do more, and do better. Maker Festival Manila 2014 followed the format of the Mozilla Festival in London. This event of the Mozilla Philippines Community is the finale campaign for 2014.

Opening up data is one thing, but making it usable by the...

Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:35:29 -0400

Opening up data is one thing, but making it usable by the general public is quite another. A visualized data set can go a long way in achieving usefulness of data to the full potential. To this effect, Open Knowledge India has been running its Visualized Data platform for some time.
To know more, please visit:
http://in.okfn.org/visualized-data/